Saturday, we drove up to Denver to move our older daughter out of her dorm room. The dorm isn’t officially closing because there are students there who have no other housing options, but they asked that anyone who has other options to please vacate and turn in keys as soon as possible. They’ll deep clean everything and then reassign whoever is left so that everyone has single rooms. The dining hall went into take-out meals only mode a week or so ago.

We had to fill out an online form to choose a two-hour move-out time slot and indicate who would be coming into the building to help with the actual packing. When we got into the car to head north, I asked my daughter if she had all of her ID cards and her room keys. One key is a digital card that opens the hallway door, and another is an actual key that opens her bedroom. That key costs $150 to replace, so back in August when she moved in, I implored her not to lose that key. But of course, today she said:

“Wait… I don’t have my bedroom key.”

“Is it in the house?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Hang on…”

She texted her boyfriend and he had it in his wallet. He lives 30 minutes west of Denver and commuted to school, except really that turned into: he basically moved in with my daughter in her dorm room so he could sleep half the day and not have to get up early to catch a train to campus. And now he had her key.

“Can he meet us in the parking lot at the dorm?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to hide my irritation.

“He doesn’t want to take any mass transit right now. Can we drive over to his house after we load up the truck and get it? I have a bunch of his stuff in my room anyway, that we need to return to him.”

I swear, I should charge this kid rent or something.

So we drove to Denver, and parked in the mostly empty lot outside the dorm. I expected them to check our ID’s or something when we entered the lobby, but they didn’t. They just pointed at a cluster of large wheeled bins for us to use to bring everything down and let us go about our business.

It took us less than two hours to empty her room. Her one remaining quad-mate was there at the same time as us, so I guess it was nice that they got to see each other once more. Not that they were good friends or anything.

(There were four girls total at the beginning of the year, and my daughter was the odd kid out: homeschooled, smart, already earned an associates degree by the time she graduated high school, a film program student whereas the other three were all nursing students, didn’t wear gobs of makeup or skanky outfits, etc. The three girls pretty much excluded my kid from the start and proceeded to binge-drink their way through the fall. Before the second semester even started, one of them was removed from the dorm by her mother because she thought that one of those girls was a bad influence on hers, and then a few weeks into January the bad influence ended up moving out abruptly because her family was moving to Texas and she had to go with them. So it was just my daughter and this one girl left in the quad room, which reduced the drama in there significantly, but there wasn’t much hope that they’d suddenly become best friends, if you get my drift.)

So we got everything packed up and I cleaned the bathroom a bit and wiped down the desks and such. The bad influence had actually left a lot of her stuff behind (a bag of clothes, a makeup organizer, a popcorn machine), and we just left it in there for the last quad-mate to deal with. I had enough problems and didn’t feel the need to add THAT GIRL’s leftover crap to the list.

We checked out at the desk in the lobby amid small clusters of other kids and parents, some wearing masks and gloves. I actually stayed outside for that part. It was stuffy in the lobby, and I just needed some space and fresh air. Denver still sounded normal, but there were far less people walking around than usual.

When she came out, we walked to the truck and then drove 30 minutes to Lakewood to drop off her boyfriend’s stuff and pick up the key. We asked him to come out to us at our truck so we could supervise them. No hugging or kissing allowed, just an exchange of a pile of his stuff for the $150 room key. Then we left, stopped for a drive-through very late lunch, and headed back home.

And that’s how her first year living on campus ended. When we dropped her off in August, we never imagined the year would turn out quite this way. I feel bad for her, but I’m also glad she’s home for the duration of this…

whatever this is.

I don’t know what to call it yet. It’s not an official quarantine or shelter in place event here. Yet. But we’re together, and we’re staying home as much as we possibly can.